


Stories and Surprises

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Midnight Verse [12]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Gen, Original Character(s), Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 11:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Midnight tries to get data while Thundercracker has his world tilted sideways by Starscream</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories and Surprises

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Discussion of a stagnant society in its death-throes  
> 2\. Alternate history which is blendy and fanon-ish for the war

Midnight went to find one of her favorite uncles, idly tracking the groups of the Autobots until she figured out where Jazz was. She knew Thundercracker hadn't been lying to her, it was nearly impossible to lie on a frame-link, but... she hadn't been raised to take just one side of any story. She finally did come across him, and leaned in the doorway to see if he was just playing around, or really working on something.

Jazz had on some Robbie Coltrane, just listening to it in the background, tapping a stylus against his data-pad every now and then, but he sat up from his lazy lounge at seeing her pretty quick. "Hey there, little trouble," he said with a smile. "Come on in," he added, making room on the over-sized lounge.

She came over, grinning at him, as she tucked herself into the other end of the lounge, stretching out a foot to rest the front edge of it lightly against his leg. "Hi, yourself. How's it going?"

"Goes smooth like a rollin' river," he told her, as if he would ever burden her with whatever he had been working through on his data pad.

She snorted at him a little, "You know I quit believing it when you told me that a long time ago, right?" The words were affectionate, and she smiled bright and affectionate at him. "But... okay."

He laughed slightly. "Look, I already have one of you in my troops. I start messin' wit' you too, Prime'll have my aft in a sling." Granted, he kept Bumblebee from getting himself in too deep with his stubborn courage, but handling two would be hard. Even with the secret about Bumblebee broken, at least among upper ranks in the Autobots, Prime was not likely to handle it well if both his creations went Spec Ops.

She shook her helm at him, affectionate and amused, then shrugged a little. "You might be right, there." Her brother had known the secret far longer than anyone suspected, and even now it wasn't openly said or handled.

"So, what brings ya to Uncle Jazz? Keeping a lonely mech company?" he teased.

"Yep!" she said, happily amused, before she let her optics dim a little. "I even want you to tell me a story."

"That's not a cheerful look, sweetling, for story-seeking," he said with worry. He shifted on the lounge, patting by his side. She was his size, near-abouts, these joors, but she was still little in his optics.

She twisted around to come over closer to him, leaning her helm against his shoulder, tipping her neck back to look up at him. "I want to know about what Cybertron was like... before, but... not in Iacon. I know a little, from my daddies, but -- you know how protective they are of me," she shrugged a little.

Jazz considered. "You're asking for more than just the images of a city and a world at the height of its accomplishments, frozen that way for eons?" Jazz asked her softly.

"Yeah," Midnight said, nodding, though she shuddered a little at the way he'd said even that much. Frozen could so easily be just another word for stagnant, immobile, decaying. "I... guess I'm trying to understand where we came from -- I've been doing a lot of reading. War doesn't just come from nowhere, and it doesn't get support without... what at least _look_ like good reasons, even if they're not."

"You said a mouthful, Midnight," Jazz said softly, dimming his optics so he could access those memories. "Mind you, I was in Iacon most of the time. Special projects division back then, but it meant cultural attache, more than anything. We still had visitors then, or off-planet teams returning and needing to adapt."

She was always happy when she got something right enough that Jazz praised her, and she nodded against his shoulder. "Okay... I get that."

"But being what I was, and being good at it, meant staying up on the cities. Moving from one to the other, just getting a feel for the pulse and knowing all the hip spots, so I could help this functionary or that..." He fell into those memories, the ones before things went really bad on one mission, before the first blows of the war. "Two kinds of blowing off steam, back then. Getting riled up on high-grade or some other additive-spiked energon.... or taking in the fights. Only, there were two kinds of fights, and both of them had their own bad attached. The illegals didn't have any regulation, and led to maimed or deactivated mechs and femmes. The legal ones...." His voice drifted off. "Might have been worse, in the long run," he finally said.

"My daddies' were both..." she said, nodding. "I... maybe I just haven't been around long enough, but how could anyone want to watch people die, or get hurt that bad. I -- I know it happens here, too, and I don't understand that any better."

Jazz had to think long and hard. Not on the answer, but if he should tell it to her. Because she was still a Sparkling, to his way of thinking. But she needed to know, needed to understand, or how could she choose her side properly. "When a society has a set routine, and they've got the bare minimum it takes to get by, with no hope of getting more, because the rations are there for a reason on high...you can take joy in having that meager allotment, because at least you're free and alive, compared to the poor mechs down in that ring."

"That's... it seems kind of disgusting," she said, even while she nuzzled closer against him. "I... I guess I can see it? But... what an awful thing, for everyone."

"It was. I was lucky.. .freely admit it. Was Sparked into a class that was meant to be social facilitators, and therefore I was a lot freer than others. Prowl too. Sparked to be upper-defense/security. Your daddies...near as I can figure, were probably illegals at their creation." Jazz scowled. "See, the closest the Senate would get to admitting things were running out was to slap a law on Creation. You had to have permission. And while it was supposed to be weighted to replacement of mechs and femmes as they wore out... somehow, the lower classes, who wore out more often, weren't gettin' near as many replacement slots."

She shifted, tucking one of her hands behind his back to press, tucking close, nodding. It wasn't anyone's fault where they were sparked, but with the memory of Thundercracker's acid fury about the Senate, Iacon, everyone in the 'Con army that had been near starved so long... it was good to hear one of her favorite uncles admit he'd been lucky. Then Jazz scowled like that and she paid closer attention, the words making her blink her optics, as she listened. "That's -- pretty obviously backwards, isn't it? And that's why my brother was hidden so much? Even before someone took him to the orphanage?"

Jazz chuckled. "Don't miss a beat, do you? Yeah, little star. Bee, from the tale I got eventually, was an illegal. Your papa got a good sized ration, apparently, and the three of them had access to materials, and a friendly medic type."

"You'd fuss at me if I missed beats, so I try not to," Midnight answered, smiling back at him as she slotted that into place in the picture she was still building.

"Your papa was already a rebel, it looks like," Jazz said proudly. "So...that bit about the legal games being worse? They were meant to blow off steam between rival cities."

She smiled at that pride, at all of her uncle's love for her papa there, then nodded. "Warfare in substitution, with a lower casualty rate? What did they do, put stakes on each side?"

"Concessions, and prestige," Jazz agreed. "Might have worked, might not have. What it did do was just encourage a lull in hostilities between the major city-states." He sighed, personal pain creeping over his face. "The Senate had reinforced classism to the point most mechs and femmes never looked broader. But the ones who did were tagged and watched and not trusted."

Midnight tucked herself closer, her other hand spreading on the broad span of his symbol. "Because everything was just barely balanced, and anyone shaking the system could start horrible things happening? Or just because they wanted to keep what they had?"

Jazz was silent a long moment. "It took me a long time, Midnight, to see that," he admitted. "Keeping it all just where it was. That's why I kept the visitors busy. Why I was told to befriend the longtime journeyers, and help them back into society," he said with so much regret. He didn't want to really dwell on certain memories there. He'd never been able to see just where he went wrong in handling one return, to make that mech hate them all the way Starscream did.

She made a low, soft noise, tipping her helm up at him to try and follow that, processor poking at it thoughtfully, cuddling close to him at the regret and hurt in his voice. "What did make you realize?"

Jazz held his answer back, the flippant one of 'life', and considered. "Tarn. Vos? Or maybe it was actually watching a mech I thought I could stick with choose to use violence rather than reason to change things."

That made her move, made her shift around to look at his faceplates straight on, that 'mech I thought I could stick with' echoing through her. The idea of her Uncle Jazz pairing with someone made her optics blink. And who...? "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Things had been slipping sideways, and I was getting a glimmer, but it took me... it took him letting me live, once, and get away, for me to know the world was all fragged and we needed to find a better way fast. Only, the 'Cons pushed too fast, too hard and the next thing we knew was endless war." Jazz's tone implied that the 'Cons weren't all wrong, but their methods were.

Midnight nodded, but then her helm tipped as she realized that the stories weren't lining up. "But if papa was rebel, if he didn't care about the Senate any more than any of them do... Is it just how crazy for battle Megatron is that's kept the war going? I -- I'm not saying this right," she frowned, trying to figure out the right words.

Jazz rumbled softly at her, a cross between a chuckle and concern, because this was way heavy thinking for a sparkling. "Might be. Might be that we got in a rut, and couldn't see when it was time to start building after breaking it all down so far. Your papa, even now, would be willing to put the destruction and crimes aside, if it meant peace and a chance to save our world."

She made a quiet, thoughtful hum and shifted to tuck herself back in against his frame. "I know he would. He always wants what's best for us and for Cybertron."

"No matter the cost to himself," Jazz muttered, shaking his helm with an affectionate exasperation. "So, all this curiosity about the past had to come from somewhere, bitling. What's really on your processor?"

She whistled out a long, thoughtful sigh, and stayed tucked against his chestplates, flicking options back and forth inside her processor like she was pulling one of the human juggling tricks. Or maybe three-card monte. "Wouldn't believe me if I said I was just trying to understand where we came from, maybe see a little better what the chances are for another way to go, would you."

"I think I'd actually get a chance to say 'pull the other one, it plays jingle bells' if you did," Jazz told her, smiling a bit. "Your papa'd be in a fit to know you're walking on his favorite brood subject."

She laughed at that, then shrugged. "So I get it honest?"

Jazz,s visor flicked in agreement, but the light firmed into that clarity of purpose that accompanied the occasional interrogation he had to perform. "Midnight, you don't want me to know why, say so, and I'll just be my sneaky best to learn why. Or you can tell me, and know you've got someone supporting ya as ya figure things out."

"Telling you now!" Midnight yelped. The last thing she needed was Jazz trying to figure out what she was up to!

Jazz nodded sagely at her. "Thought you'd see it my way, bitling."

`~`~`~`~`

Starscream proved not as hard to find as Thundercracker feared, but only because the glitch was in one of the few places he had shared with him. It was a remote island, an abandoned human facility that Thundercracker had grudgingly helped Starscream gut and make room inside of for their frames.

Skywarp couldn't be bothered to help that day, or maybe Starscream hadn't invited him. It had just been the two of them, just like now, as Thundercracker landed and entered the main building to find out how badly damaged Starscream was that he was not returning to base. It had flicked through Thundercracker's processor that Starscream was canny enough to know better than to be at base in too damaged a condition. There were too many mechs eager to change the status quo, and Megatron's own callous dismissal of the Air Commander made an assassination tempting.

Thundercracker barely cleared the entry before he had to come to a sharp stop. While he had noted the spinning fan things on his approach, and the floating buoys that were far too large to be human, he really hadn't processed that it might mean something. Yet when he entered, he saw machinery, crafted from human scrap as far as he could tell, all thrumming with energy and leading to…a distillery. Not just any distillery device, but an honest to Primus energon distillation machine was the primary focus of all the activity in the chamber.

"Starscream?"

His optics sought out his commander, taking in the fact the mech was sitting still on the decking, optics barely lit. The visible damage explained that; several core shots would require deep repair sequencing from a restful state.

"Make yourself useful," Starscream demanded, but the voice was strained with an attempt to keep from sounding as snappish as usual. "As I see you have managed to find repairs already."

Thundercracker did not make any reply to that; he knew he was strong enough to fend off any attempt to extinguish him in the medical bay, and unimportant enough to ignore. Locking any and all stray thoughts of his encounter with the femme aside from the main fight down, he moved over to begin the repairs to Starscream's frame, checking to see if any of the interior damage fell inside his abilities first. He really did cling to the rank of letting Starscream lead gave them, and somewhat hated himself for it. After all, Starscream didn't really deserve any loyalty for its own sake…

"After, make certain you top up, but I'll have to write you a false-code in case anyone scans you," Starscream said, optics fully dimming, as Thundercracker worked.

Thundercracker wasn't certain which startled him more, that Starscream had just offered to share his bounty and protect Thundercracker from the fallout, or that Starscream was entrusting his defense to the other mech.

This cycle just kept getting interesting.

"Of course I trust you! You're still trine!" Starscream snapped irritably, letting Thundercracker know it had bled over through the touch-link while he worked.

Those words felt reassuring, despite the fact it had to be a scheme from Starscream, and ominous, as if Starscream didn't count Skywarp.

Thundercracker really didn't want to find out if that was truth, and Starscream, thankfully, didn't press in on those thoughts.


End file.
